New Product Safety Precautions Being Taken at Target

The retailer releases the Sustainable Product Standard, which assesses the safety of beauty products, cleaners and baby care products and aims to force manufacturers to eliminate harmful chemicals used in the products

Oct 17, 2013

With over 1,700 stores nationwide, Target has announced the release of their new Sustainable Product Standard, according to Inside Bay Area. The new program will assess the safety of over 7,500 products, which include cleaners, baby care products, beauty products and more. Target will assess these products for harmful chemicals and in turn request that manufacturers stop using these chemicals.

The company will use GoodGuide technology and data collection software to rank products on a scale of 1-100—for each harmful chemical used, a point is deducted from the product. Inside Bay Area points out one example: products that use eco-friendly packaging gain points, while those who test their products on animals lose points. Products with higher scores will receive better placement in the store.

According to Inside Bay Area, the new program will not only better educate consumers about what’s in the products they use, but it will also give them safer options, in the event that manufacturers comply with the standard.

In addition to asking manufacturers to be transparent about the harmful chemicals they use, the program will also collaborate with the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics to create new safety standards for rating cosmetics—an initiative that will begin in 2014.

In particular, Target is focusing on the elimination or reduced use of 1,600 different chemicals that pose a risk to human health and 1,500 substances that threaten water quality. According to Inside Bay Area, most US household cleaners do not list ingredients, and beauty terms will conceal the danger of their ingredients with terms such as “fragrance.” This campaign hopes to heighten awareness and eliminate discrepancies such as this.